Marten Transport, LTD. - Mondovi, Wi.?

That kind of naive, absent-minded thinking has gotten drivers into trouble at scale houses quite frequently where I run,both with my company and others. Now I can't comment on CA and their rules because I haven't been that far west (furthest west I've been to date is Texas) but I can tell you that in the Southeast where a few of the states use weigh in motion they will red light a truck in a hurry for being above that 80,000 pound weight limit. In this case, Marten got caught attempting coercion, knowing the load was overweight and they were penalized for it. They tried to make the issue about service failures and that plan backfired. The fines issued the 1st time should've been a wake up call.

 

You've somehow managed to correctly identify excellent antonyms for the type of thinking I employed in my simple analysis above. I have no idea how old you are, but I suspect your lack of perception might have something to do with the generation you belong to. Your reply seems to evidence an aversion to not only moderate risk-taking but teamwork as well.

As my posts on these forums clearly show, I'm no fan of Marten. But let's be clear: it's often more the driver and company together vying against the government to get the job done, than it is the driver and the government together vying against the company to get it done.

Let me take a shot at finding one thing you might agree with me on with regard to this topic. The purpose of weight regulations is to protect the roadway, right? Focusing in on this one aspect, how do you suppose 80,040 compares with 80,000 when it comes to roadway deterioration? Big difference? Physics and common sense tell us "no."

So in the grand scheme of things, against the backdrop of society in general, how rogue is it really, for a driver to be attempting to go down the road with an 80,040 rig? It really isn't very rogue at all in that sense, right? So in a way, are we not really talking here about passively accepting government overreach versus active dissent? (Actually we're not, but it kind of sounded good so I wrote it.) Anyway, the bottom line is I prefer to be a little rogue sometimes when I know it benefits both me and my employer, even if it means taking on a tiny little bit of extra personal risk of getting socked with a citation.

Of course, the simplest analogy is speeding. You never drive over the speed limit? I know there are a few people out there who never do, but I (and most everyone else) am not one of them.

 

Yawn. We're not talking about speeding and teamwork has nothing to do with this (not even remotely)we're talking about weight limits here and the fact that Marten was rightfully penalized for trying to coerce someone to break the law to haul that overweight load. Try to stay on point and quit trying to make excuses for Marten. DOT doesn't give two ***** if the weight is 80040 or 80010. If its over that 80000 lb limit,it's overweight/over the limit, bottom line. If you think it's no big deal then why don't you haul it for them.

 

Does marten have per diem pay?

 

Okay, so the speeding analogy didn't work; let's try stop signs instead. Ever roll through one in a big rig at 1 mph without coming to a complete stop? Any DOT officer within sight can easily spot that and cite you for it!

This analogy, for it to do its job here, need not extend to something your employer is "coercing" you to do, however let's go ahead and suppose Marten has a way of monitoring for complete stops (they probably do, actually) vs. roll-throughs, and tries to penalize any drivers who routinely come to complete stops at stop signs rather than roll through them at 1 mph---in the name of fuel efficiency, say. You gonna scream bloody murder about that?

Like the speeding analogy, this one compares very well with 80,040 when the closest DOT scale is easily far enough away for the fuel burn-off to bring your weight down below 80K. The odds that you somehow end up with a weight citation in this scenario are infinitesimally low...probably a lot lower than being cited for rolling through a stop sign at 1 mph.

Your problem here is you're dead set on accusing any company of being at fault anytime it tries to "coerce" (loaded term...) an employee into doing anything at all, regardless of how ridiculously minor it might be.

 

Um, yes they do.

 

You are beating a dead horse-let it die already. And blowing stop signs has nothing to do with this matter either. No analogy you can think of is going to cover up the fact the company screwed up and got caught red handed breaking the law-nice try.